Hi, The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, or word document and automatically converting to a text file? Thanks Aidy
Are you pairing with them? Can you not just drive and do the typing, asking them questions all the while to keep them engaged? I think David is cooking something up (have a look at his blog) but it might be a while coming. If you can find a Mac, the TextMate text editor has nice syntax highlighting (thanks to Ben Mabey) that make it look a bit prettier. On 7 Nov 2008, at 14:24, aidy lewis wrote:> Hi, > > The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. > > Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, > or word document and automatically converting to a text file? > > Thanks > > Aidy > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
As Matt said there is no specalised tool for editing Features (Though textmate is great with Bens bundle). If you checkout Cucumbers Milestone 0.2 you will notice '' Provide a REST/AtomPub interface to Cucumber''. The idea of having some sort of wiki interface is something thats in the works for Cucumber, no quantifiable deadlines yet though I''m afraid. -- Joseph Wilk http://www.joesniff.co.uk Matt Wynne wrote:> Are you pairing with them? Can you not just drive and do the typing, > asking them questions all the while to keep them engaged? > > I think David is cooking something up (have a look at his blog) but it > might be a while coming. > > If you can find a Mac, the TextMate text editor has nice syntax > highlighting (thanks to Ben Mabey) that make it look a bit prettier. > > On 7 Nov 2008, at 14:24, aidy lewis wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. >> >> Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, >> or word document and automatically converting to a text file? >> >> Thanks >> >> Aidy >> _______________________________________________ >> rspec-users mailing list >> rspec-users at rubyforge.org >> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users > > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users >
Hi Matt, How are you? On 07/11/2008, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net> wrote:> Are you pairing with them? Can you not just drive and do the typing, asking > them questions all the while to keep them engaged?Cucumber is now the standard here, with all projects using it. The guys who were using Watin have now moved to Watir. In most conditions, I will pair with the customer. In other projects the BA has been writing the acceptance criteria. I saw an example today in Excel; using the Given, When, Then format.> I think David is cooking something up (have a look at his blog) but it > might be a while coming.Thanks for heads up.> > If you can find a Mac, the TextMate text editor has nice syntax > highlighting (thanks to Ben Mabey) that make it look a bit prettier.As you know Matt a majority of users here are using Windows, but I could ask for a Mac. I would be grateful if you could send me a screenshot. Thanks Aidy
On 7 Nov 2008, at 14:42, aidy lewis wrote:> On 07/11/2008, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net> wrote: >> Are you pairing with them? Can you not just drive and do the >> typing, asking >> them questions all the while to keep them engaged? > > Cucumber is now the standard here, with all projects using it. The > guys who were using Watin have now moved to Watir.Awesome! Looks like we snuck Ruby in! You should give Aslak a quote for the website - having the BBC on there will definitely give Cucumber some more gravitas.> In most conditions, I will pair with the customer. In other projects > the BA has been writing the acceptance criteria. > > I saw an example today in Excel; using the Given, When, Then format.It would be pretty trivial to write something to copy excel to plain text, but why bother? What''s wrong with notepad?>> I think David is cooking something up (have a look at his blog) but >> it >> might be a while coming. > > Thanks for heads up. >> >> If you can find a Mac, the TextMate text editor has nice syntax >> highlighting (thanks to Ben Mabey) that make it look a bit prettier. > > As you know Matt a majority of users here are using Windows, but I > could ask for a Mac. I would be grateful if you could send me a > screenshot.Will do off-list, and we can catch up. Are you coming to XP day?
> Hi, > > The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. > > Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, > or word document and automatically converting to a text file? >There will be custom editors/wikis with aides like code completion, nice visuals, running etc. Kinda like FitNesse, but nicer. The plan is to make a RESTful API for Cucumber. I''m thinking a Sinatra web app that uses the Cucumber CLI and exposes it with AtomPub or a similar JSON api. The server would be part of the Cucumber gem, and can be started up with a single command on any machine. From there I hope to see people developing richer clients like standalone web apps, wikis, wiki plugins, Flex/Air apps, editor and IDE plugins, hell, word and excel plugins in VB.NET even! My experience tells me you can''t get the customer/business to be comfy in a simple text editor. I have accepted that as a fact it''s not worth working around in most cases. Kudos to those who can, I know some teams succeed. I have talked to a student who''s working on the REST part as part of his thesis. Please work with him if he shows up here on the list. In order to successfuly make a usable REST API/server I will focus the next weeks and months on improving Cucumber internals. Part of that is an AST that will make manipulation of features, scenarios, tables and steps easier, as well as a better data structure for output and errors. I have started this work and I''m trying out different ideas. I expect to make some visible progress before the end of the year. Then I expect all the Cucumber forkers to take it and run. Thanks for all the great contributions so far folks! Aslak> Thanks > > Aidy > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
Matt Wynne wrote:> Are you pairing with them? Can you not just drive and do the typing, > asking them questions all the while to keep them engaged? > > I think David is cooking something up (have a look at his blog) but it > might be a while coming. > > If you can find a Mac, the TextMate text editor has nice syntax > highlighting (thanks to Ben Mabey) that make it look a bit prettier.You can now also get syntax highlighting in vim: http://github.com/bmabey/vim-cucumber/tree/master I would really like to see a non-technical stakeholder try to use vim. :) -Ben> > On 7 Nov 2008, at 14:24, aidy lewis wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. >> >> Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, >> or word document and automatically converting to a text file? >> >> Thanks >> >> Aidy >> _______________________________________________ >> rspec-users mailing list >> rspec-users at rubyforge.org >> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users > > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
You could try the bundle in the E editor on windows http://www.e-texteditor.com/ 2008/11/7 aidy lewis <aidy.lewis at googlemail.com>:> Hi Matt, > > How are you? > > On 07/11/2008, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net> wrote: >> Are you pairing with them? Can you not just drive and do the typing, asking >> them questions all the while to keep them engaged? > > Cucumber is now the standard here, with all projects using it. The > guys who were using Watin have now moved to Watir. > > In most conditions, I will pair with the customer. In other projects > the BA has been writing the acceptance criteria. > > I saw an example today in Excel; using the Given, When, Then format. > > >> I think David is cooking something up (have a look at his blog) but it >> might be a while coming. > > Thanks for heads up. >> >> If you can find a Mac, the TextMate text editor has nice syntax >> highlighting (thanks to Ben Mabey) that make it look a bit prettier. > > As you know Matt a majority of users here are using Windows, but I > could ask for a Mac. I would be grateful if you could send me a > screenshot. > > Thanks > > Aidy > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users >
Ben Mabey wrote:> Matt Wynne wrote: >> Are you pairing with them? Can you not just drive and do the typing, >> asking them questions all the while to keep them engaged? >> >> I think David is cooking something up (have a look at his blog) but >> it might be a while coming. >> >> If you can find a Mac, the TextMate text editor has nice syntax >> highlighting (thanks to Ben Mabey) that make it look a bit prettier. > > You can now also get syntax highlighting in vim: > http://github.com/bmabey/vim-cucumber/tree/master > > > I would really like to see a non-technical stakeholder try to use vim. :) > > -BenI know its terribly 20th century but you could use a pen and paper :) I''ve started doing this a lot more now we have a 21st century pen (http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-io2-Digital-Writing-System/dp/B00064FXH0). -- Joseph Wilk http://www.joesniff.co.uk
On 7 Nov 2008, at 15:38, Aslak Helles?y wrote:>> Hi, >> >> The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. >> >> Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, >> spreadsheet, >> or word document and automatically converting to a text file? >> > > There will be custom editors/wikis with aides like code completion, > nice visuals, running etc. Kinda like FitNesse, but nicer. > > The plan is to make a RESTful API for Cucumber. I''m thinking a > Sinatra web app that uses the Cucumber CLI and exposes it with > AtomPub or a similar JSON api. The server would be part of the > Cucumber gem, and can be started up with a single command on any > machine. > > From there I hope to see people developing richer clients like > standalone web apps, wikis, wiki plugins, Flex/Air apps, editor and > IDE plugins, hell, word and excel plugins in VB.NET even! > > My experience tells me you can''t get the customer/business to be > comfy in a simple text editor. I have accepted that as a fact it''s > not worth working around in most cases. Kudos to those who can, I > know some teams succeed. > > I have talked to a student who''s working on the REST part as part of > his thesis. Please work with him if he shows up here on the list. > > In order to successfuly make a usable REST API/server I will focus > the next weeks and months on improving Cucumber internals. Part of > that is an AST that will make manipulation of features, scenarios, > tables and steps easier, as well as a better data structure for > output and errors. > > I have started this work and I''m trying out different ideas. I > expect to make some visible progress before the end of the year. > > Then I expect all the Cucumber forkers to take it and run. Thanks > for all the great contributions so far folks!Very nice indeed. If you can come up with some kind of mock suite for the API interface, that might help us get going with something. It would be really cool to have a web editor for features that doubles as a textbook RSpec / Cucumber reference app to answer the FAQ Fernando asked a few days ago (''is there a good example of a rails app using RSpec''). I''d love to collaborate on such a project. cheers, Matt http://blog.mattwynne.net
On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 9:24 AM, aidy lewis <aidy.lewis at googlemail.com> wrote:> The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. > > Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, > or word document and automatically converting to a text file?As Aslak mentioned there are lots of tools to come, but I just figured I''d throw out there that at weplay we pair with our customers on the initial generation of the feature files, once that is done we''ve given them a GitHub account and both the Business Owner and our QA will go in and tweak the feature files from within the GitHub web-based editor. Obviously we''ve had to build up a level of trust on both ends, and this level of integration didn''t come over night, but its nice to see commits coming into the project from all members of the team (not just developers). Josh
On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Josh Knowles <joshknowles at gmail.com> wrote:> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 9:24 AM, aidy lewis <aidy.lewis at googlemail.com> wrote: >> The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. >> >> Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, >> or word document and automatically converting to a text file? > > As Aslak mentioned there are lots of tools to come, but I just figured > I''d throw out there that at weplay we pair with our customers on the > initial generation of the feature files, once that is done we''ve given > them a GitHub account and both the Business Owner and our QA will go > in and tweak the feature files from within the GitHub web-based > editor.Holy crap! I didn''t know they had that. Josh - thanks for pointing this out - this changes a LOT! Next step .... Write a post commit hook to fire a message off to your build machine and have it run all the scenarios and email you the results. Sometimes everything will just pass. Sometimes you''ll know you have new work to do. Any takers? And if you can train the business folk to make changes to their own branch (or maybe give them all their own forks - might be simpler) ... man - this opens up a ton of opportunity. Thanks for bringing this up. Cheers, David> > Obviously we''ve had to build up a level of trust on both ends, and > this level of integration didn''t come over night, but its nice to see > commits coming into the project from all members of the team (not just > developers). > > Josh > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users >
On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 2:30 AM, David Chelimsky <dchelimsky at gmail.com>wrote:> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Josh Knowles <joshknowles at gmail.com> > wrote: > > On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 9:24 AM, aidy lewis <aidy.lewis at googlemail.com> > wrote: > >> The customer is not happy about writing Stories in a text editor. > >> > >> Has anyone else experienced this? Is anyone using a wiki, spreadsheet, > >> or word document and automatically converting to a text file? > > > > As Aslak mentioned there are lots of tools to come, but I just figured > > I''d throw out there that at weplay we pair with our customers on the > > initial generation of the feature files, once that is done we''ve given > > them a GitHub account and both the Business Owner and our QA will go > > in and tweak the feature files from within the GitHub web-based > > editor. > > Holy crap! I didn''t know they had that. > > Josh - thanks for pointing this out - this changes a LOT! > > Next step .... > > Write a post commit hook to fire a message off to your build machine > and have it run all the scenarios and email you the results. Sometimes > everything will just pass. Sometimes you''ll know you have new work to > do.Don''t we already have this with something like cruisecontrol.rb [1]? Checkout the code from Github, set it up as a project in cruisecontrol. On any commit it will run the build and send emails if there were failures. Where you thinking something different or am I missing something? -- Joseph Wilk http://www.joesniff.co.uk [1] http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/rspec-users/attachments/20081108/a2b81ef9/attachment.html>
On 8 Nov 2008, at 02:30, David Chelimsky wrote:> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Josh Knowles <joshknowles at gmail.com> > wrote: > Next step .... > > Write a post commit hook to fire a message off to your build machine > and have it run all the scenarios and email you the results. Sometimes > everything will just pass. Sometimes you''ll know you have new work to > do. > > Any takers? > > And if you can train the business folk to make changes to their own > branch (or maybe give them all their own forks - might be simpler) ... > man - this opens up a ton of opportunity.I''ve been thinking about this a lot. Assuming you have a stakeholder who can check changes to feature files, you''re going to get a borked build sooner or later - it''s unlikely they''ll change requirements and the code will magically adjust itself! (not for a few years anyway!) I guess like you say (and I hadn''t thought of this) the right idea is to get the stakeholder to check in their changes in a different branch to the one in which the developers are hacking on the actual changes. That way you can have a build on the stakeholder branch which is often broken, but the breakages are like a ''todo list'' for the developers - it''s basically your WIP. And you can have another build on the developers'' branch which is sacred and people get the usual punishments for breaking. I think there''s a nice synergy to be had here between cucumber, git and cruisecontrol.rb that will help you have a really lean workflow. Very interesting. cheers, Matt
On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 9:30 PM, David Chelimsky <dchelimsky at gmail.com> wrote:> Next step .... > > Write a post commit hook to fire a message off to your build machine > and have it run all the scenarios and email you the results. Sometimes > everything will just pass. Sometimes you''ll know you have new work to > do.cruisecontrol.rb already takes care of this for you. -- Josh Knowles phone: 509-979-1593 email: joshknowles at gmail.com web: http://joshknowles.com
On 8 Nov 2008, at 17:33, Josh Knowles wrote:> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 9:30 PM, David Chelimsky > <dchelimsky at gmail.com> wrote: >> Next step .... >> >> Write a post commit hook to fire a message off to your build machine >> and have it run all the scenarios and email you the results. >> Sometimes >> everything will just pass. Sometimes you''ll know you have new work to >> do. > > cruisecontrol.rb already takes care of this for you.So does your stakeholder break the build when this happens? Isn''t it just broken most of the time in that case? cheers, Matt
On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 12:48 PM, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net> wrote:> So does your stakeholder break the build when this happens? Isn''t it just > broken most of the time in that case?More often then not they end up just creating pending scenarios that need to be implemented, as opposed to breaking the build. We have the luxury of all being in the same room, so we try and communicate if there are any questions or concerns on the changes that they are making. -- Josh Knowles phone: 509-979-1593 email: joshknowles at gmail.com web: http://joshknowles.com